A/N: So I'm procrastinating on updating A Love Through Time again, but here's a new story for you. The idea for this story came to me through a challenge by cinnamonstah called the MTV Challenge. You can find it on my writing/posting forum: Songfic Outbreak. The song I used to inspire me was Close to the End by Mojofly. Enjoy... it's my last fic of 2006, and my first Narnia attempt.

Wake Up Without You Again

She crossed the room like she had a million times before, shutting her eyes and laying her hand on the ornate handle. She fought against the nervous feeling in her gut as she twisted the golden knob slowly until she heard the latch click. Pulling open the red oak door, she felt her lip quiver and her nose burn with a tingling sensation.

There was no cold breeze like she wished there had been. 'You need to stop fooling yourself!' her own voice chastised in her head, though it had a growling edge to it, making it sound like the tone a lion would have could they speak. Opening her eyes, she looked upon the back of an empty wardrobe, tears welling quickly to blur her vision.

It was after midnight, a time she had become friends with, though she knew it was the hour of deceiving. She was in that room again. That room of her parents' house where the wardrobe that she had first found beauty in sat growing dusty under a large, yellowed, moth-eaten sheet. And once again, her heart broke a little more.

Shoulders slumping, her throat grew tight, and her eyes stung with the fresh tears that grew there. Swallowing against the lump that forced her to cry, she leaned desperately against the wardrobe before her, sighing heavily.

For the past three years, since she had been thirteen, she had come to this room most every night and tried to find a miracle she knew would never come. Her nights always ended in disappointment and with the sun came a tear-stained face and another piece of her heart broken. All she could do was wonder when the immense hole in her being would once again be filled and render her whole like she had been the last time she had on the other side of this portal to magic.

Lucy Pevensie longed to be back in Narnia, but she knew she could never be. Aslan had told her that she had outgrown it and that she could never return. At least not in this life. At first she was fine with it because there had been no Mr. Tumnus the last time she had been there. But then her mind convinced her that time could be turned back, that she could see Tumnus again if she willed it strongly enough. When that wish gave way two months ago to lost, she contemplated taking her own life, but thought twice about it. If she did that, she would surely never find herself in Narnia again, the sunshine in her hair as she danced in a meadow with him.

It was all so disheartening. She didn't know how much more she could take before falling ill of an unforeseen disease which ate at her being. Her chest pained her everyday with the taunting reminder that she would probably never again see the one she had grown to love. Here she was, sixteen, in what was supposed to be the best years of her life, and she felt like an old woman of one-hundred or more.

Collapsing to the floor of the wardrobe, she sat inside it, her head in her hands as her body began to shake violently with sobs. She could hardly remember when she had found out that her love for Tumnus was more than friendship. All she knew was that she needed to be with him again or else she would go insane.

Peter, her eldest brother, had tried to tell her that she could be with Tumnus in her dreams, but even that had become mundane and haunting. Her dreams had turned into fruitless wishes, ghosts of a time that had been which only served to make her wake each night and take this trip down the hall.

Pulling her knees to her chin and hugging her legs to her chest, she rocked back and forth somewhat, humming the wordless tune that the faun had first played for her on her very first visit to his home. It was a tune that rang in her ears all hours of the day, even in sleep as visions of his face rushed through her mind. Hot tears dripped from her chin and onto her knees, soaking through her nightgown.

A creaking in the hallway outside the room told her that either Peter or Edmund had been awoken by her weeping. They would never come into the room though. They knew she needed her privacy; this was something she needed to face on her own. She watched the shadow of four legs cast under the door by flickering candlelight.

She closed her eyes and turned her head away, not wanting to give her mind the chance to deceive herself once more. She didn't want to get her hopes up in thinking that it was Aslan outside the room, there to take her to where she could be with Tumnus. She shook her head and turned to the back of the wardrobe as the floor creaked again and voices talked in hushed tones. Her fingertips caressed the wood, longing to feel it disappear beneath her touch so that a forested area with an old iron lamppost and a kindly faun would appear. But it wouldn't. It never did.

Unsure of how long she had sat there letting her tears subside, she rose from her seat inside the wardrobe. Her limbs were stiff and prickling with a numb sensation as she dragged her feet across the floor. Opening the door, she looked back over her shoulder at the piece of furniture that had once been her way into a world of something better. Now it was only that: furniture.

Pressing her lips together, she turned away and left the room. Entering her own, she crawled into bed with a lifeless sigh. Rolling onto her side, she hugged her pillow and stared out into the semi-darkness as though she willed Tumnus to just pop up beside her. Her tiny twin-sized bed seemed so large to her now, and she huddled under the covers, trying to give herself some warmth. Imagining his arms around her, she felt a salty tear slip from the corner of her eye, down the side of her cheek and neck before creating a minuscule, dime-sized puddle on her sheets.

Her life, in that moment, felt useless, lonely, and unwanted. Why couldn't she just die? Move on to the next life and be in Narnia again. Why did Aslan wish to torture her so? Why hadn't she stayed in Narnia as the queen all those years ago? All these questions swirled inside her head, making her beg for sleep. But deep down, she wasn't even sure she wanted that because she knew she would wake up in the morning with a gray outlook even if the sun was shining. It was how she woke up each morning. Wishing she could sleep on forever, never to wake. Never to wake up with him again.

Lucy watched the heavens outside the window across the room, stars were twinkling brightly. Suddenly one shot across the sky in a blaze of dying glory, and she closed her eyes fast, hugging her pillow closer and praying. Wishing that she could see Tumnus again. Somewhere within her though, she knew that it would never be. This star was the same as the last four she had wished upon over the years. Just a white streak of fleeting nonsense, taking with it the words of a wish which would never be heard or answered by anyone.

Turning her back on the window, she tried to keep her eyes open. She didn't want to sleep now. She had no desire to take a chance with waking up in the morning the way she had hundreds, almost thousands of times before. But it was hard to fight. Her eyes fluttered, struggled, and burned for the sleep they were being depraved of.

It wasn't long before Lucy could no longer keep up the effort to stay awake. Eyes finally closing in a waver, she drifted peacefully to dreams. Her heart reached out to a faun in a chair by a fire, hoping to grab hold and never let go. Hoping to keep her in the vision so that she would never wake without him again.